It was that time of the year again; Anniversary!
The food at this place was recommended by a friend of a friend so I decided to check it out. I went to the website and loved the Italian music that played while I checked out the menu. The items looked very interesting so I decided to make that our celebration destination for that year.
I called and spoke with a very nice sounding lady and made a reservation for 7. I informed her it was our anniversary dinner and she replied with "Come hungry and thirsty!".
Upon arriving, we were a little thrown off by what we saw. We weren't expecting a fully floodlight lit rectangular room with a full glass wall to the parking lot packed with both low and high(!) tables and a 5 seat bar area.
We walked up to the desk and were greeted with "EVERYONE wants Italian tonight..." as she was frantically moving through papers, receipts and other items.
"Do you mind a high table?" she asked. My wife and I just looked at each other. "If that's all you have for our reservation I guess that will have do." I said. RED FLAG ONE!
The table was dirty so we stood next to it while 3 people came over to clean it off. We sat down and realized no one had wiped the table so when the waitress came over to put the uh... paper... place mats down we asked for someone to wipe it, which someone did. The paper was put down on the wet surface and immediately soaked through. ~sigh~
We were handed our menus. I had to put mine down three times to accommodate all of the arms in front of me putting down glasses and apparently there was some OJT going on with respect to how the silverware is supposed to be placed on the table so it took some time.
I snickered to myself as the waitress explained that the salad fork goes to the left of the main fork... (both forks were identical). But I digress.
My wife had an odd expression on her face. I had to almost shout over the cacophony (many tables with loud children/bad parents). RED FLAG TWO!
I queried: "See anything you like?"
The look that was returned said it all. RED FLAG THREE!
We got up and left and went to Anzio's Landing in Mesa and had a wonderful quiet time in a cozy booth with nice mood lighting.
Perhaps someday I will try the food.